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Iíve been asking myself a lot of really basic (and very hard) questions pertaining to spirituality lately. In a different thread, Soulfire gave me this advice:(emphasis mine)

And so I ask of you, what do you want out of your religious path? Where is your spirituality leading you and what do you look to gain from it?

Abridge your list a little and you've got mine. Relationship with deity/ies, for sure, and self-growth (although that's a little stalled for now, but I keep getting beat over the head with "I know you FEEL like you OUGHT to have recovered 100% from giving birth and fully adjusted to the presence of an infant in your household, but you know, that doesn't make it so and this stuff will still be here when it is so").

I'm a little less certain about a guide for life and soul-enrichment (and yes, I do know what you mean and I don't know how to describe it either). Soul-enrichment I see as more of an effect of the combination of the relationship with deities and self-growth than as a result of my religion itself, and not something I actively want so much as just something that happens and I enjoy. (If any of that makes sense.) A structure for life... I feel like that's something bigger than my religion, and something I'm constantly developing that my religion is only a part of, and thus I can't really say that it's something I want out of my religion so much as just something I want, full stop.

The one that I will say I outright neither expect nor want from my religion is feelings of peace and contentment. They're nice when they happen, but not something I seek out from religious sources. I also... might have a few tiny control issues sometimes that interfere with feeling terribly comfortable with the "if I'm not the one in control" part of that item. And I feel like wanting peace and contentment is sort of at odds with wanting self-growth, personally. It's not usually an easy, peaceful, contented thing in my experience.

Beyond that... I'm not sure what I want or expect from my religious path. The relationship with deity/ies is what's really important from a religious perspective to me; it's what makes it religion and not something else. Beyond that and self-growth... I'm not actually sure there is anything. It may be as simple as that. (Well, deceptively simple. But you know.) There are other things I want my religious practice to be, but that's more "things I want to do" than "things I want religion to do for me".

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"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced." -- Aart Van Der Leeuw